NPC Labs, a GameFi infrastructure startup founded by three former Coinbase employees, has raised $21 million to accelerate gaming development on Coinbase’s Ethereum layer 2 network, Base. This funding round was led by Pantera Capital, which contributed $18 million, with additional investments from Makers Fund, Hashed, Mirana Ventures, and several other investors, according to a July 22 report by VentureBeat.
Empowering Game Developers
NPC Labs aims to help game developers bring their projects to market with more support than they typically receive from traditional publishers. Daryl Xu, NPC’s CEO and former Coinbase business development associate, highlighted the challenges developers face with publishers. “After spending years creating a game, developers are beholden to publishers for support, marketing, and distribution,” Xu said. “Developers often give up 70% of the proceeds and risk having the publisher pull the game if it’s not generating sufficient revenue.”
NPC Labs seeks to return control to game developers and gamers. “We want to help build fun games for the mom in Nebraska while making it dead simple for developers to benefit from being on-chain,” Xu explained.
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Leveraging Base for GameFi
NPC Labs will serve as a core contributor to B3, a layer 3 GameFi-focused blockchain built on top of Base. B3 will manage transactions, gas fees, and the bridging of in-game assets, allowing developers to focus more on creating engaging gameplay.
Choosing Base as their infrastructure was a strategic decision for NPC Labs. Viktoriya Hying, the firm’s chief operating officer and another former Coinbase employee, noted that Base is well-positioned to connect wallets to Coinbase’s 100 million user base. “We want to make it safe and simple, eliminating what makes crypto intimidating for the retail user,” Hying said.
B3 will also support Ethereum and other Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchains, further broadening its ecosystem. This flexibility is expected to attract a diverse range of GameFi projects and developers.
